Breakthrough!! Garry Tonon wins via his tokui waza, inverted heel hook from cross ashi garami – defeating two time world champion and ADCC bronze medalist Gilbert Burns despite a major size and strength disadvantage at Polaris 4 in England tonight. It was an interesting match, with Mr Burns scoring some nice takedowns and positional scrambles to pins whilst Mr Tonon employed an interesting strategy of recovery into standing position to set up submissions. About two thirds of the way through the match, the strategy worked as Mr Tonon locked out a very tight cross ashi garami and controlled it through to the finish against the very explosive and strong Mr Burns. It was a good show overall. There was a fine match between 10th planet standout Nathan Orchard who countered the dangerous leg lock game of Japanese wizard Imanari with a solid traditional BJJ positional game through to a strangle. Dillon Danis put on a superb performance, two fine looking arm in guillotines, one of which was unlucky not to get a finish; then a very well applied inverted heel hook for a very nice win indeed against highly decorated and larger opponent, Jackson Sousa. It was nice to see three such well engineered submissions at such a high level against such talented opponents. Now we head back to NYC to prepare Gordon Ryan for EBI 9 where he will once again be then smallest man in the field – depending upon his technique and tactics as his lifeline to victory.
